I've just got to Manula valley, and have been to the forest/abandoned mine location.
The house and the tram ride brought back some fond memories of sequences in Myst II, III and IV for me. So far, I've found the drama to be interesting and voices well acted. The story could benefit from better writing though. Nikifor was a rather annoying NPC, but he did remind me of some of Jeff Goldblum's movie roles.
I think there are some bugs on the game. Firstly, there's this light on the control panel in the bridge that is supposed to be lit by activating the correct no. of crystals, pressing a coloured button then pulling a lever in the telescope room to one of six positions. According to the Walkthrough I am supposed to see the third light light up on this control panel. However, this light is not seen to be switched on even though the image of the panel is seen. When I do the same series of steps for the bridge controls, the fourth light on the panel is supposed to light up, but the third button lights up now. I was worried, but I was able to continue onwards in the game. I believe there is a programming error that caused a wrong files to play such that light appear to be lit out of sequence. I really hope the developers can do something about this, otherwise the control panel puzzle makes no sense.
Secondly, I happen to notice that if I turn off the music volume in the options menu, Umang's voice overs in the game cannot be heard even though the subtitles for his comments could be seen. This was slightly disappointing, as I found the music to be distracting in the first part of the game, and if I turn off the music I miss out on hearing his vocal reactions to the puzzles in the game.